A boom in medical tourism

[okarol]

Saturday, August 30, 2008

VIRTUAL REALITY
A boom in medical tourism

By Tony Lopez
Manila Times

The Philippines could tap a gold mine in the next frontier in tourism—medical services. Medical tourism could actually be more lucrative than ordinary travel for leisure tourism. The fees are high, the clients are predisposed to spend oodles of money, and the facilities, world class, are already here in the Philippines, at a price just a third to half of the US rates.

Yet, a study conducted by Deloitte does not even mention the Philippines as among the destinations for medical tourism in Asia or Southeast Asia. It mentions Singapore and Thailand, but not the Philippines. This is disturbing because the Philippines has far better facilities and more qualified and experienced medical personnel than either or both Singapore and Thailand.

Singapore is threatened by the Philippines. When the Asian Hospital in Alabang began operations, Singapore reduced the rates of its hospitals. St. Luke’s, Asian Hospital and Makati Medical are just three of the Philippine hospitals that could give hospitals in the region a run for their money.

Is Deloitte guilty of bias? Why didn’t it bother to mention the Philippines as a medical tourism destination? Is this the same Deloitte that is now conducting a study on the future of the Philippine automotive industry for a princely sum of $500,000 just to tell the local automotive people what they already know?

Anyway, the Deloitte study is a minefield as regards medical tourism. You can read it at the web.

An estimated 750,000 Americans traveled abroad and spent $2.1 billion for medical care in 2007.

By 2017, as many as 15.75 million Americans will seek medical services in other countries and spend $30.3 billion to $79.4 billion, according to “Medical Tourism: Consumers in Search of Value”, the Deloitte study.

 “Medical tourism—the process of ‘leaving home’ for treatments and care abroad or elsewhere domestically—is an emerging phenomenon in the health care industry,” says Paul H. Keckley, executive director of the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions.

In a survey of more than 3,000 Americans, Deloitte found that outbound medical tourism is expected to experience explosive growth over the next three to five years. This is because of the following:

• Health care costs are increasing at 8 percent per year, well above the US Consumer Price Index (CPI), thus eating into corporate profits and household disposable income.

• The safety and quality of care available in many offshore settings is no longer an issue.

• Consumers are willing to travel to obtain care that is both safe and less costly. In fact, two in five survey respondents said they would be interested in pursuing treatment abroad if quality was comparable and the savings were 50 percent or more.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said during a recent roundtable discussion that medical tourism was one of the niches where the Philippines could excel “as the country has some of the best doctors, nurses, and health care providers that are best in the world.”

“We have the best medical facilities offered in major hospitals like Asian Hospital,” she asserted. “And we can have more of this in the tourist zones in the regions as cost is competitive and the quality is high.”

The President said that establishing a stronger medical tourism in the country could help immensely in the govern­ment’s drive to make the eco­nomy better. “With a strong medical tourism industry, we can provide more jobs and cut down on poverty,” she noted.

Health Secretary Francisco Duque acknowledges that medical tourism in the country was still in its early stages. Still, medical tourism earned $200 million in 2005 alone, a fifth of what Thailand, India and Malaysia earned from medical tourism during the same year.

Philippine rates are very competitive. Duque says the prices of medical and surgical procedures in the Philippines are 30 percent to 50 percent cheaper than elsewhere. For example, a coronary bypass costing about $50,000 in the United States is only about $25,000 in the Philippines.

Hospitals in Metro Manila that currently providing services to foreigners are:

St. Luke’s Medical Center, Asian Hospital, Medical City, Makati Medical Center, Capitol Medical Center, Lung Center, Philippine Heart Center, National Kidney and Transplant Institute and the Philippine Children’s Medical Center.

So there. The Philippines can cure and care for the moneyed sick of the world. It’s only a matter of projecting the Philippines onto the radar screens of client countries.

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http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2008/aug/30/yehey/opinion/20080830opi4.html